Brain Waves through Time: 12 Principles for Understanding the Evolution of the Human Brain and Man's Behavior

Brain Waves through Time: 12 Principles for Understanding the Evolution of the Human Brain and Man's Behavior

Synopsis

This captivating work takes us on a spellbinding journey through time and space to explore the age-old question: What makes humans unique? The answer revolves around the very essence of what makes us distinctly human -- our brains.

Dr. Robert DeMoss derives twelve principles that can explain the rise of humankind and the evolution of human behavior. For out of this evolution rose the only species that can contemplate its own future, think about the very act of thinking, and build mighty civilizations and destroy them, too. He explores the circumstances that came together to produce the extraordinary way we think, learn, and store memories. Furthermore, DeMoss dares to tackle the overriding question of our time: Is our brain to evolve once again? Never before has a book provoked us to, think our place in nature and how we might best flourish and fulfill our innate promise.

Excerpt

THE HUNGRY AND BIASED BRAIN

From four to five billion years ago, our planet was born. Sometime thereafter, under the influence of the earth's environment and aeons of time, the first micro-organisms emerged. Beginning life as simple creatures, early life forms changed and evolved, and changed some more. Through all the changes, though, there was one constant: Once alive, all organisms retained remnants of their biological beginnings.

Because our brains are alive, they manifest a host of idiosyncratic ways of processing information -- ways that mark our brains as both biological and human. Here we will focus on a few distinctive features of our brains that strongly influence how we experience the world, and afterward, we will draw some important inferences about behavior.

Often compared to computers, our brains and computers do share important properties. Information in a computer is segmented into different files. Within our brains, information is segregated or compartmentalized. Different types of memories, for example, are segregated from one another.

Computers rely on electrical energy to process information, and so do our brains. Neurons process information by relying on both electrical and chemical energy (we will look at these processes shortly).

I should not carry this computer analogy too far, however. To do so would lead to incorrect inferences about the brain and behavior. Our brains part company from computers in a number of fundamental ways that are highlighted in this chapter. This point bears remembering because our brains are often criticized when they fail to function as "efficiently" as computers, but the origins of brains and computers are quite different. The computer was designed by human engineers to solve specific types of . . .